Page 17 of Time Out

“Not helping, Belle.”

“Ah. So moral support has a name.”

“Hello.” She waved from her perch where she’d made herself at home in the kitchen. “Got anything to drink?”

“No offense, but I think I should know why you’re here, so maybe we can start with that?”

“It’s her story.” Belle slid off the stool. I swear… she got away with everything. “I’m thirsty.” She had a hand at the fridge’s door handle and waited for Davis’s go-ahead.

He was still giving me that constipated, worried, and maybe… slightly happy look. I’d wipe that last one away soon enough. “She always like this?”

“Belle doesn’t know the meaning of the words stranger or boundaries.”

“Truth.”

Without tearing his eyes off me, he nodded. “Go ahead. Water only and no phones.”

“No phones?”

“Not until I know you two didn’t come here to snoop through my things or sell pictures of my home to the highest local gossip rag or whatever, so yeah. No phones.”

“Like I need the cash. I’ve made more money sitting in this kitchen in thirty seconds than you have in three months, and yes—I know your salary. Which is public information before you really do think I’m short a few marbles.”

Awesome. She was spiraling out of control. “Belle! Can you please shut up?”

“Well, he should know.” She twisted off the top of her water bottle and placed a second one on the counter. “That’s for you, Mags. You should fill your stomach.” She turned to Davis. “My great-grandfather’s family started, and my family still runs WWMP. I’m old, homegrown Nashville money. Trust me, any peanuts I’d make off selling pics of you to gossip rags—which neither of us would ever do—would be tossed in the donation plate at next Sunday’s Mass. If I still went to church, anyway.”

Davis blinked rapidly and then scrubbed his hands down his face. “What in the hell is going on right now?”

“Sorry.” Although I didn’t really think he was talking to me. “She’s a lot, but I needed to see you, and she wouldn’t let me come alone.”

“Right.” His hands fell to his hips with a heavy sigh, and he blew out a breath so hard his hair blew up at his forehead. “Let’s get back to that, and maybe the rest of this might start to make sense.”

It was go-time. I’d practiced this a million times once those sticks started coming up positive. Now I was there—chin tilted up to look him in the face, and he still had to look down at me. He was everything I remembered. A slight wave to the thick but neatly trimmed and cut hair, longer on top. An innocent-looking face and a body that spoke of sin, he’d definitely proven he was no innocent.

“She’s pregnant,” Belle blurted.

Davis’s head whipped in her direction, and mine followed.

“What?” She shrugged and swallowed a gulp of water. “You were taking too long.”

Dear God, please forgive me for all my sins and take me now.

“What’d you—” He turned to me. “What’d she say?”

“Merry Christmas, you’re going to be a dad?”

Which was not the way I’d decided on how to let him know—it just came out.

Davis sputtered. Swiped his hand over his hair and down his face again. It was too early to be those pregnancy hormones raging I’d already read about, thanks to Belle, but it did something to me. Maybe it was being here again. Seeing him. He was utter perfection carved straight from marble with the cheekbones and those lips and muscles…

Two months ago, I walked away because I feared how much I’d felt for him after that night. And it wasn’t the sex. Not entirely. It was the laughter and the respect and the fun and the freedom I’d had to be myself, to try new things. To do things I’d only ever been curious about before and have him love every damn minute of it.

“We were safe. Every damn time.”

“Studies show condoms don’t always hold up in the heat of hot tubs.”

Davis’s head whipped toward Belle, who I was pretty certain needed a knife to her throat, and then back to me. “What?”

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